Majuro Interview with Cynthia Ochoa

Cynthia and a student

 Cynthia is currently serving as an SM in Majuro, Marshall Islands as an elementary teacher.

      What has surprised you most about being an SM?

 I was pretty surprised to find out how TRUE some warning we were given in training were...and also the amount of workload that is expected from us SMs

What was the first thing that happened to you when you

 arrived?  Did everyone stare at you? What were the first few days like?

When we arrived in Majuro at the airport, there were some locals to receive us, we met everyone, then lined up with all of our bags to take a picture. Well, I was being waited on to get in the picture, and as I hurried over to where everyone was, I tripped over my long dress and knocked over a good amount of luggage… first impression, not good.  The first few days after that were followed by school preparation, shopping for home necessities that we really wouldn’t need, and just trying to figure everything out.

Did you feel lonely/homesick at first?  What has helped you

 overcome negative feelings? 

I was surprised that I didn’t really feel lonely.. the beauty of the people and the island just made me feel at home right away, and though as time passed, I missed my family and friends, I realized this is my home now, and it will be for the next ten months. I was happy knowing that!

Any cool God/miracle experiences?  Where have you seen God

 working in your life while you have been there? 

There has been plenty of little events where you just know it had to be God.  This is a cute one. Everyone wears flip flops here, and with only 2 pairs of sandals, mine were starting to wear off quickly. With the stipend that we get, it is hard to buy anything else that is not food, but I separated some off to buy more flip flops.  We went to the store, and I tried a red pair, which fit fine, put them in my cart and went to check out.  When I got home to try my new flip flops, I discovered they were a size or two too small. They hadn’t been too expensive, but I was frustrated that I had made an useless buy. Besides that, I had no idea how I had grabbed a kid’s size! I was so sure it had been my fit! I threw the sandals under my bed and forgot about it. A few days later, one of the kids in my classroom came in from recess with his sandals in his hand, one of which was ripped and despite my attempts to fix them, nothing worked. I remembered then my pair of useless flip flops, happy that I may had found an use to them. I ran to my apartment and got them for my student, and found out they fit him perfectly. It’s been a month and a half since the incident, and I still see little Johnsay wear those flip flops every single day. It still makes me very glad that for some reason, I got a wrong size J

What is the culture like?  What do the people look like?  What

 language? Any odd customs or traditions that you are trying to get used to?

 The culture is beautiful, in a nutshell. I would have to write an essay trying to describe it, but I am accustomed very well. It was different at first, but I am so glad I am still getting to know this culture J

What do you miss the most about the USA?  Do you wish you

 could come home right now?  Or are you wishing you could spend a lot longer there?

 I think if someone told me it was time to go home right now I would cry and hold on to a pole so they wouldn’t take me. Other than missing family and friends, I love it here and can’t bear to even think of the day I have to leave… I do miss a few stuff from the USA, mostly how cheap food is, and some of the resources for school too.

Any scary experiences yet?  Times when you thought you might

 be in serious trouble/danger?

This one time, we were all walking to the store when a student met me on the street and said hi. I fell a little behind the other SMs, and when I looked up there was a man who walked towards me, and then behind me TOO closely, I panicked, screamed my friend’s name, and the man walked away. I pray that God be with us everywhere we go, I would be so scared if anything happened to anyone, but I know He takes care of us all!

Any people you have grown close to?  What are their names?

Personalities? Yes! I get along with all of the student missionaries, but the girls from my apartment and some of the boys from downstairs have become more than friends, a family to me.  When you spend pretty much all of your day with a certain group of people, eat, cook, clean and work with together, you become very close. It’s funny because we are from all over the place and have VERY different personalities. We are a brady bunch, but a family in Christ indeed J Names: Damaris Gonzales (southern), Talmia Ebenezer (Walla Walla), Natalie Espinoza, (La sierra), Andrew Felix (La Sierra), Leroy Manning (Walla Walla), Kyle Rice (Walla Walla J)

Conditions of the classrooms

What is your day-to-day job?  What are your duties?  Do you like it?

Well, on weekly basis we must be present daily at 7:30 a.m.  for staff worship before school starts. From 8:00 to 3:00 pm, its being on your feet, in front of a class of 24 loving but crazy children, teaching them science, math, reading, writing, bible, and social studies, You are their teacher but also a counselor, many times a nurse, and always their friend.  After school  there is almost always grading, detention, or tutoring, or a consultation with a parent. Then there is some lesson planning on the weekends, and church attendance consists of Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, both in the morning and Adventist Youth (AY). You must always be in check of all the calendars because you don’t know what day you will have to preach, do song service, staff worship, or be in charge of AY or any other church service. Besides teaching all week and participating in church events, I am a Sabbath school primary teacher. It gets pretty heavy, but God makes sure never leaves you alone, and I know every single day, that as hard as it is, it is worth it, so much. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Majuro SDA School

Majuro Beach

Students gathered for Sabbath afternoon

Kyle Rice and Cynthia, both WWU students

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How I am a Missionary

by Katie Palumbo

Kenya, Maxwell Adventist Academy

When I started the search for missions call, I had in my head an image of what a student missionary should be. I equated service with suffering. I felt like I had to go into the jungle with no electricity or running water in order to really be a “missionary”. In my mind the people wouldn’t speak English or ever have seen a photo of themselves. I searched and searched but somewhere along the way God informed me that this was not going to be the case. A few emails and a phone call later and I found myself a call at Maxwell Adventist Academy in Kenya.

Katie with a student in Kenya.

Working at Maxwell is completely different from any call I ever thought I would take. Every stereotype that I had of missionary work has been broken. This is not a bush school. I live in a comfortable home with internet and running water. My students aren’t poor, they have good homes and parents who feed them and assist with homework. They don’t necessarily need or desire to hug me every day and they can’t wait to go home at the end of the school day.

I came with the idea that I had to suffer, that I needed to be broken and rebuilt in order to truly serve, but God is slowly erasing my preconceived stereotypes. I’m learning that God’s ability and desire to use you does not depend on your living situation or how poor the locals are, you just need to be willing. He is showing me how to serve in a practical way. The needs on the campus of Maxwell Adventist Academy are different. Students don’t need my money or a bag of rice, but they do need a good example, they need encouragement and unconditional love. I used to believe that the only way to challenge myself was to spend this year completely removed from anything and everything familiar or easy. But I am being challenged in ways I never expected. I’m learning to love and to give with all my heart. I’m learning how to be patient and persistent. I am learning how to be content.

This year is being spent planting seeds, trying to make a small impact on a place and people that in eight months will move on just fine without me. Proverbs 16:19 reminds me that I can make all the plans I want but it’s God who determines my steps. Despite all my protesting and reasons not to go, I am here. God hasn’t called me to the bush or to a hut; He’s called me to Maxwell. I am a missionary. 

Waking up in Cambodia

by Alex Drury

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, at Cambodia Adventist School 

Alex with her students.

And so begins week three of teaching the young-ins. It is barely past seven o’clock in the morning and already I am finding myself wiping the sweat from my forehead in between giving morning worship to my students. I am having the most difficult time fathoming how Cambodia could possibly become any more sweltering and humid than it has already proven itself to be. Still, all of the locals assure me that we are currently in “cold” rainy-season.  I believe it sure as ever seems as though Cambodia is as close to hell-hot as it can get, as it is already hard enough to breathe here….but maybe I am just still in denial.

Today, I must admit that walking out of our apartment and coming to school took more than a stretch of my efforts and beyond the normal “We’ve got this” pep-talk from Alex. Don’t take me wrong, my students have already stolen my heart and I love them to pieces. I just suppose a whole part of me is still “at home” in any desire to find comfort, whereas I know that I should be wholly here.

In the beginning I comprehended the necessity of being present…here, where I physically was, not wherever my head was. I understood that it was going to be more than vital to completely and wholeheartedly throw every ounce of myself into this experience and for the most part I have attempted to do just as so, but I would be lying if I said that being here, any part of me being here, was easy. By no strains of the imagination is this easy. Nonetheless it is exactly what I signed up for.

Waking up in Cambodia is hard. Leaving my unconscious “reality” and being hit hard by the actual reality that is around me every morning usually shakes me up more than not. The alarm alone is enough to shake up my world, then in addition so quickly more “abnormalities” come flying in every direction. Oh yeah, there’s the wild pack of dogs again that always seem to be fighting outside our window…oh right, every morning without fail I WILL wake up sticky and miserably hot, mhhmm, five o’clock in the morning really IS the middle of the night, I cannot even see my hand in front of my face….and the hardest morning realization of them all…I am quite literally a world away from anything that is comfortable to me.

Inevitably I will allow these thoughts to overflow my mind state until the second “snooze alarm” hits me like a brick wall. Amber, you can do this. I am not completely positive how or where these words come to me each and every morning, but they do without fail.   I would like to believe that these words are from something greater than just my subconscious. I would really like to believe that this is an example of God carrying me through this. I’d like to believe that He’s right there every morning without fail, flashing each of my students’ faces in my mind, reminding me to not only finish what I have started, but to master it.

I do, with absolute confidence, know that this year abroad as a student missionary would be a thousand and a half times harder if I did not believe that God was here carrying me through each moment of every day. For that alone I am appreciative; I know that if I tried to accomplish this year on my own, it would be near impossible. It honestly is the craziest feeling, to know and feel Him working through me and the people around me. I am so blessed to have a God that cares about me.

And so, as I sit here wiping the sweat from my forehead, my prayer is that I never forget why I am here, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, how thankful I am that I will never have to do this alone, and that I always remember this experience is so..SO very much greater than a few pictures on Facebook ..or a couple of check marks off of my bucket list; this experience is so far beyond my own self.

Magical Kenya

by Tanzi Lampert

Kenya

Tanzi loving the magic of Kenya.

Magical Kenya is what many refer to as the place I am living in for this year, and magical it is. I step out my front door and see a sunset out over the Ngong Hills every evening with the glorious rays of sunlight shining through the clouds from the heavens. I've even seen a double rainbow shimmering over the school in that same time the sun was fleeing from sight. 

As I walk out the door to go running every morning there are gazelles grazing in my front yard and birds singing. Driving down crazy, bumpy dirt roads I commonly get to see giraffe, baboons, zebra, and other "exotic" wildlife while on the more urban streets I have to dodge donkeys pulling carts, cattle being herded, chickens scurrying, and goats devouring everything. I also get to see fabric and clothing of so many variations hanging from market stalls displaying colors and patterns so enthralling that walking through the market isn't just a shopping experience, but a cultural experience, especially when the bartering and language barriers come into play. I am in awe of the three inch wide spiders that scurry along the surface of the walls in my home and wonder how I've become used to it.

In seeing everything around me and witnessing the ways in which God blesses I know what makes Kenya so magical. It isn't the wildlife, it isn't the culture or the people. What makes Kenya so magical is the Creator of the Universe, the One who makes all things new, the Giver of life and the King of Kings. 

Leaving!

by Amber Aqui

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, at Cambodia Adventist School 

We board our plane to Phnom Penh in twenty minutes. And just like that the greatest adventure of my life begins.  I still am not even completely positive as to how the process of becoming a student missionary began. It likely started as a mere possibility of an idea, a few pieces of redundant paperwork here, a couple of meetings there, and before I knew it, I had submerged so far in to the “idea” that my passport was in hand and my plane tickets to Phnom Penh had been booked. There is unquestionably no turning back now. With each step of the process I did not realize the magnitude of what all the meetings and paperwork would eventually add up to. Now, at the end of the beginning, (the hours and hours of planning and waiting) I realize.

I clearly remember the first time I too confidently waltzed into the Student Missions office at Walla Walla University and sat down with Jeanne, our SM coordinator.

“Jeanne,” I said, “I will take any call that does not, ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT require me to teach.”

Amber with her students in Cambodia.

I actually did believe myself for quite a while…and then God punched me in the face. Interesting how things work out.

In actuality I was not even slightly interested in leaving the perimeters of my lovely and mostly comfortable home country; I initially applied to a taskforce position as a dean, managed to launch myself pretty far into process,  only find out that I was one year too young. Although this frustrated me, I HAD to believe that God had different plans in store.  Teaching high-school math and English in Cambodia is so far off from my initial plan that it MUST BE a God thing.

Throughout the year one of my most amazing friends, Alexandria Drury, had also been furiously searching for the “right” call. Her application experience was somewhat similar to mine; her heart had originally been set in a completely different direction. I remember calling Alex shortly before hearing a yes or no on the taskforce position, “If God closes this door, I’m going to take it as a sign that we are supposed to look elsewhere, together.” She completely agreed, and after that call I instantaneously felt like God was leading me in a different direction, and quite honestly I was scared to absolute death about the new feeling He was placing deep inside of me, so deep it frightened me to search for it.

After my original let down from the taskforce position, I called Alex again, and a whole new set of emotions flew in, poured in, almost overwhelmingly in only the good sense of the word. We were going TOGETHER and it felt oh so exciting, but oh so incredibly intimidating. Now we just had to figure out where.

The only problem was that Alex and my original wants were polar opposites. I had somewhat selfishly wanted an “easy out” with many comforts of home, and Alex wanted a thatch hut in the middle of the desolate jungle, or so it felt. We talked about the islands, Pohnpei, Saipan, we even pondered Thailand…and after a few weeks, seemingly out of nowhere, Cambodia was proposed. We both, oddly enough in our indecisiveness, agreed within literal minutes that this was where we were being called to. We shot an email to the director in Cambodia right then and within two days we were told that we were wanted for the teaching positions.

This entire pre-Student Missionary experience has already been a test of patience and perseverance and I can already tell that we have been changed for the better.

I can say with entire confidence, God wanted us here. Right now I cannot tell you why, but wholeheartedly I believe that He brought us here. I not only want to believe that, I NEED to.

Note: Amber and Alex have now been in Cambodia for a month and a half.  They are enjoying their challenging but rewarding teaching positions and the adventures God allows them to experience every day.